The Other Side of Sanity
by CocaCola Gold
Summary: While studying with her best friend, high school student Nora meets 'Mr. Midnight', a mysterious young man whom she is instantly drawn to. As their dark relationship blossoms, the powerful bond between them begins to threaten everything Nora holds dear.


_Sooooo definitely alternate universe...pretty much just a fun thing I did 'cause I was thinking of Katy Perry's song that's ALWAYS on the radio (though I still love it!) Anyway, lemme know if you like!_

"Kiss me, ki-ki-kiss me,

Infect me with your love and

Fill me with your poison."

Nora laughed. Vee was being ridiculous again, practically yelling her sexual fantasies to the entire empty, darkened library.

"Yeah, and you know what else?" Vee said, challenging no one. "_I_ want to have a lover ride up on horse, then to roll around in the sand then have sex in the sand and the waves. Is that too much to ask?"

"Shush!" Nora said as she swatted Vee's arm, giggling. "You're so loud!" The two friends sat at a back table in the business section, somewhere close to ten-thirty at night. If she were honest with herself, Nora knew that there wasn't much chance, despite her own protests, of them being heard. One librarian was on the clock, but other than that only they, the ever-dedicated student journalists, were still in the building this late.

"Seriously, I want to find that perfect prince riding up on a black stallion to find me, dressed in white lace, beside the ocean waves- actually, in a cave by the water where I'll await my predestined lover." Vee said, sighing dramatically and pressing the back of her hand to her forehead, her eyelids fluttering.

Nora rolled her eyes. "A blackstallion? Don't you mean white?" She asked.

"Nora, Dear," Vee sighed, faking exasperation, "don't you know yet? Every girl likes a bad boy." Vee opened the book newspaper journalism in the 1960s, a book with a red cover that made it look as though the pages lay on on a mat of dried blood. "What, am I too fat to have these dreams?"

Nora turned to her friend, frowning. "What?" She asked. "Are you serious?"

Vee's mouth upturned in a smile as she stared at the printed pages. "You'd better go find those books on civil rights before eleven if we ever want to get out of here, right?" She dismissed her friend.

Nora stood from the table, still shaking her head at Vee. "Don't even think that, Vee." She departed, disturbed, walking amongst the tall rows of books. The bookshelves always had reminded her of a great labyrinth and were part of the reason she herself wanted to be a librarian someday. The other part of wanting to be a librarian was just being able to be around books, books that wouldn't judge you or talk to you, or worse of all, focus all their attention in on you. She hated that more than anything, she thought as she glanced through the aisles; that was, feeling as though someone was waiting for her, hoping that she would tell them what to do: being a group leader in projects, or a student council member, which she had done for one year. No, she much preferred helping out others. That was her, she thought, so opposite Vee.

"Oh!" Nora exclaimed as she nearly rant into a black leather jacket as she turned into an aisle. "Excuse me." She backed away for a better look. The person turned and Nora was appropriately astonished. He must have been the only other person besides her, Vee and the librarian in the library at this hour, and she mentally nicknamed him Mr. Midnight right then. Thick, black hair hung down into his dark, piercing eyes, and his face was composed of high cheekbones, a harsh jawline, shapely lips and a dark brow line. Her mind skipped through the literary characters she fantasized about; Mr. Midnight in the leather jacket was Mr. Darcy, Heathcliff, Mr. Rochester, with something of Dorian Grey and Lestat all mixed in.

"Excuse _me."_ Mr. Midnight, no more than nineteen, pressed a hand to his chest in an exaggerated fashion. "I didn't know I was so in the way. I would have moved, believe me, if I had known that girls would be running into me in their rush to locate-" he glanced at the section heading of the aisle he stood at the entrance of, "Late Edwardian Literature."

Nora blushed deeply as she stared at her flats on the ground, ready to run away as soon as her apology seemed complete. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to. Sorry."

"Apology accepted." Mr. Midnight held out a hand. Nora blanked. Her grey eyes looked lifeless as she raised them to meet his dark ones, and his hand hung limp in the air. She seemed to have forgotten how to speak. "You take my hand now, as is custom?" He suggested.

Nora ruffled up, blushing still. "Nora," she shook his hand briefly. "But I have to get back to my friend. We were studying, and..." she trailed off, almost lost in those sparkling, dark, humoring eyes. "Nevermind. I'm sorry again." She turned to leave, but didn't get more than a pace before Mr. Midnight had grabbed her wrist. With his uninvited touch, a hot shiver shot through her body, like a song on the radio that hits you just the right way.

"_Kiss me, ki-ki-kiss me"_

Nora gasped and jerked her hand free.

"What?" He asked, his eyes humoring her still. "Can't I help you find your Late Edwardian Literature, Miss...?" The way he said 'Miss' sounded like a threat or a joke; she couldn't tell, and couldn't decide which she would have preferred.

"No, thank you. I need to get back to my friend." She hesitated, though, long enough for Mr. Midnight to laugh and for her to turn back to him, curious, almost annoyed, wondering why he was laughing. "What?" She asked.

"Nothing. Go," he waved her off, turning back towards the books in his aisle.

"No, why did you laugh at me?" She insisted, bothered, a flush working its way into her cheeks as she moved closer to him.

"Nora Nora Nora..." Mr. Midnight trailed, using her name as though he had known it for years.

"How did you know...?" She asked in a whisper, eyes questioning, but he continued.

He sighed and shook his head and said, "You just don't understand..."

Then he had her backed up against the bookshelves, her thin wrists in his grip, her whole body trembling and warm, his breath against her cheek as he whispered towards her ear. "Stay away from me, Nora, if you know what's good for you."

Seemingly by its own accord, Nora's back arched forward towards him, her chest bumping against his. His black eyes widened, intensified, as though he was driven by her body touching his. Then her lips spoke, without her permission, from somewhere deep within her, not her heart, but from somewhere deeper, more carnal and more human. "What if I don't want to?" She whispered up towards the cavern of his ear. He shuttered then jerked away, leaving her free to move. Nora fell forward, horrified with her own actions, and stumbled away without looking back at Him once. What had come over her? What had made her act like that? Like... like an _animal?_ She'd barely even kissed boys before. So what was this voice inside her that said she wanted him to... _touch_ her?

"Yo girl, that took you _forever_." Vee said, rolling her eyes as Nora returned, bookless, to their small back table. "Hey, did you even find the book?"

"It was checked out," Nora stumbled through a lie as she grabbed up her books. "We need to get out of her, Vee. Like, now."

"What?" Vee began to gather her things up as well, sensing the disturbance in her friend's voice. "What happened? The late-night librarian catch you with a snack or something?"

"Let's just go." Nora said, and they did, making it out of the library without incident. When Nora glanced back at the building as she pulled her Fiat Spider out of the parking lot, she saw no one in the window, and the lights shutting off. It was almost enough to convince her that tonight's encounter in the dark shelves had been all in her head. But not quite enough. Because, on her way home, it was Mr. Midnight's perfect, handsome, dark, dangerous face she kept seeing on a glance in the rearview. Like he was following her home. Or like she wanted him to.

_Hope you liked! xoxo_


End file.
